Contradiction & Reality

Chapter Thirteen

Daag-e-dil gar nazar nahin aata

Boo bhi aye chaaraagar, nahin aati

Hum wahan hain jahaan se humko bhi

Kuch humari khabar nahin aati

- Mirza Ghalib

[Though nobody can see the wound of my heart,

the wound is festering and yet the healer does not come.

I am in such a situation right now, from where even I am unable to get any news of myself.]

* * * *

Standing before the entrance of the park, he let out a tiring sigh before walking in with his head bend down. The icy breeze that was making its way into the park should have made him shiver like the rest of the people around him but he felt nothing. As he walked inside, the last rays of sunlight flashed across the sky before dying as it was written in their fate. As he walked on the grass he knew he should feel the softness of the grass beneath his feet like he used to before but now he didn't.

He sat down at their favorite spot and closed his eyes before taking in a long, deep breath. He knew from experience that the fresh air he was breathing in was filled with the sweet smell of the roses growing around the park but as it went into his nose and filled his lungs, the sweet taste he loved so much was missing...

Something was wrong with him, he knew that, but after a month and a half, he was getting used to the absence of everything inside him. But during times like these when he was far away from everything related to his life, his inability to feel disturbed him. Ironically, he had always wished to not feel anything and his wish has been granted, even if in an unwanted way...

He asked himself; if he was missing those feelings that had come to define him for such a long time, enough to become the very core of his existence? Was he missing the feeling of being wronged, wounded, hurt, abandoned? Did he want to change the absolute numbness he had been feeling from the day he had walked out of his room, leaving behind the three people who had, on different points in his life, he thought were indispensable to him? Was he missing the previously always present pain, fear, and rage that had consumed him until there was nothing left of him? Did he? Did he miss any of those feelings and the fears that had dominated his life ever since he remembered?

Did he?

He didn't remember how old he was when the yelling outside of his parents' room started to become words that made sense to him, but ever since they had, he had stopped trembling in fear, hiding under his blanket and actually listened to everything that was being said. He had cried in guilt and helplessness because no matter how the fights started, they only had one reason; him...

He had been the reason why his mother went about overworking herself and became a workaholic and had stopped being a wife to his father. It was for him that his father had fought with his mother because he had guessed how neglected he had felt, how how much he had craved for his mother's attention who had been absent from his life for work-related issues. He didn't know when was that his mother had started to work overtime and had ceased to be the mother that he had grown up loving but at some point, she had started to miss out on the most important moments of his life. From Sports days to parents' days, slowly her absence had started to increase and before he had realized, she had become a full functioning workaholic and somehow had thought that the branded clothes and toys she kept gifting him could make up for her presence.